


Empty World (So Full Of Song)

by QuenchiestCactusJuice99



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Haruno Sakura-centric, Not A Happy Ending, This is going to be depressing, be forewarned, but not quite canon-divergent either, not quite canon-compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 12:28:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18315272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuenchiestCactusJuice99/pseuds/QuenchiestCactusJuice99
Summary: Haruno Sakura is special. Not a good kind of special, not to her.(And as uniqueness always does, hers ends in tragedy.)





	Empty World (So Full Of Song)

It takes much time for Haruno Sakura to realize that she is very, very different from most people.

 

The ground murmurs under her feet, a cacophony of whispers, the trees rustling in raspy tunes, water ringing within its boundaries, the air gossiping good-naturedly. The world itself is full of energies of all kind, and they blend, loud and bright and _alive._

 

The people in the world sang too, high-pitched warbles or melodic hums or deep, resonating rumbles. They all form a strange, haunting sort of harmony together, symphonies of sounds that shouldn’t sound as horrifyingly beautiful as they do.

 

She is scared of the music. This never changes. She hears an Uchiha policeman say, “What a quiet night tonight,” and thinks in terrified confusion that it’s impossible to miss the way his song croons in suppressed _|admiration|_  against his partner’s low, dangerous tenor, to miss the way the mixing musics intertwine in a lethal dance with the loud, sky-shaking clang of the ground they stand upon, and the deadly susurrus of the air they breathe.

 

She sees a man with a quivering squeak of energy that shrinks from the earth’s present growl throw a stone at a boy with rippling pools of bright _|laughter|_  watches in fear as - even though the rock misses - a dark, trembling strain swells under the graceful faltering of the rippling pools and poisons the energy with _|loneliness|_  and _|hurt|_ and _|rage|._

 

She runs away as fast as she can, almost paralyzed at the thought of being near whatever the man was unleashing in that boy, almost more paralyzed that the man was doing it in the first place; couldn’t he see the awful amalgamation occurring with each shouted word and curled lip and cold look?

 

(And she stays far, far away from the intoxicating roars of _|fury|_ and whisper-thin, rose-petal _|heartbreak|_ combining in a sick, twisted orchestra within the hissing walls of the far compound. She knows she will fall victim to it if she ventures too close.)

 

(She won’t even touch the heavy _|resentment|_ and lingering, bitter chirrup of birdsong that echoes in the closer compound, that echoes a shadow of what should be emotion, but shakes under the weight of a tooth-aching amount suppression and _|stubbornness|._ )

 

She sees and hears everything around her, and is too meek to even protest her playful pond’s singing that twists the grumbling stone underfoot in interest, that brings the wind to brush against her shivering splish-splash of _|sad| |happy| |sad| |sigh|._

 

She is in shock the first time a girl comes up to her and her energy pushes at Sakura’s with _|disgust|,_ saying, “What a huge forehead!” and _|pain|_ is added to her music.

 

She is scared of the bullies because _don’t they see what they’re doing to her?_ How they’re changing her song, her heart, her soul? They wreck her very being and laugh, and she is _terrified._

 

Don’t they see?  


 

When she meets a girl with tinkling _|joy|_ and smug, resounding _|satisfaction|,_ she realizes that... no.  


  
They don’t see.

 

Oh, she doesn’t realize immediately. She avoids the Uchiha boy with all she’s worth, fear of getting caught up in the heady current of his rhythmic snap-crackle, the biting _|loneliness|_ almost identical to _that boy’s_ keeping her as far as she can reasonably be from the both of them. Ino seems to keep her distance as well, and Sakura clings to her _|contentment|_ to stay afloat, to stay free. 

 

Sakura hates to admit the convulsive stir of relief inside her when the far compound’s music begins to drip _|fear|_ and _|hate|_ and _|confusion|_ , and then all that’s left is the shadowy ringing of rebounding noise - reflected, like music copied back instead of a unique tune - and the boy’s snap-crackle.

 

Sakura clings to Ino harder because the boy’s energy is _so much louder_ when he returns, faster, and not to mention - full of raging _|hatred|._

 

But then she says to Sakura, “I won’t let you have Sasuke-kun.”

 

It takes a second for the name to register as the boy she must stay away from - _must keep from drowning_ \- but the hesitation is read as something it isn’t.

 

“I knew it!” Ino crows, even as her energy’s harmony is slowly quieting with a sharp _|pain|_ that Sakura recognizes too well.

 

She tries to protest but Ino does not listen, and she thinks, _he’s gotten Ino, even with how careful she was._

 

Except then Ino calls her Forehead-girl, and she knows that, with the hurt Ino’s already feeling, if she could hear and see what Sakura could, she would never have been able to keep from reacting to the _|agony|_ that wracks Sakura’s watery symphony.

 

She cannot restrain the _|anger|_ and _|betrayal|_ that adamantly snake into her crying pond, and snaps back an _Ino-Pig_ because _she can’t see the damage it’s doing, so why should_ Sakura _care anymore?_

 

But she does, oh, she does, and she cries herself to sleep with the memories of the stinging shrillness gained in Ino’s energy that day. But every time the words _Forehead-girl_ leave her best friend’s lips, everything stops and anger dictates her actions and she can’t stop the furious _Ino-Pig_ that falls from her tongue like a curse. Each and every time. She begins to hate her music, every bit as shrill and sharp as Ino’s.

 

But without Ino to focus and latch onto, _that boy_ from earlier - with dark tremors still tainting his _|laughter|_ \- nearly overwhelms her, fixating on her for some reason - _sage why please don’t let him hurt me_ \- and she makes a desperate bid.

 

Certainly if she is only close enough to the snap-crackle - still too heady, still too mind numbing, _what is she thinking_ \- to ward off the simpering refrain beneath endless oceans, he cannot sway her?

 

She falls into his chasm with little resistance, when she brushes far too close than she would’ve dared if not for her desperation.

 

He drowns her and she can no longer withstand it, gasping and only breathing in more of him.

 

She can hardly think under his harsh, hypnotic melody, and she recalls her actions from a distance, as if not in control of herself. She acts out, shrieking and chasing after Sasuke, far too deep in his thrall to escape now, drunk on his soporific song and only weakly struggling against the hold it has on her.

 

And then the world begins to scream. And it screams through the invasion, through Akatsuki, through _Madara._

 

But none of that is enough to snap her out of her trance.

 

Even at the end of it all, many, many years later, when all _|hope|_  has been deserted, has slowly faded out of existence for tired _|determination|_ and even more exhausted _|resignation|,_ and the only ones left are she and Kakashi-sensei - caustic, sizzling tones written over each other, _|grief|_ most prominent even over the _|hatred|_ that’s been pointed inwards since day one, when she had been too caught in Sasuke’s music to even try to untangle it - her mind is so muddled that she hardly catches the words out of her former teacher’s mouth. But she _does._

 

“So... quiet,” He muttered, eyes glazed with pain from injuries that Sakura can’t heal, doesn’t have the chakra to heal.

 

_(“What a quiet night tonight.”)_

 

And Haruno Sakura screams at the intensity of every haunting melody, every terrifying harmony, every sound of the world screaming, crashing into her cleared senses with the might of an army ten thousand strong for the first time since she turned eight.

 

When it subsides, Kakashi-sensei has already breathed his last, eyes open in panic, strengthless arms reaching for her in some twisted form of comfort.

 

She stands, nauseous with everything pressing in around her - the sounds, the rough, shuddering symphonies like the world has screamed itself rawer than her, the grief and the pain and that _loneliness,_ the loneliness she had been so afraid of, all that time ago - and runs.

 

She runs until she collapses, sweaty and tearstained and bloody and gasping for air that won’t fill her burning lungs, runs until her body gives out under her, but she can’t escape the noise, not from around her or inside her; her shrieking music, ignored for so long, now the texture of broken glass and twisting around the whistling air, hissing high through the earth’s clashing.

 

_(“So... quiet.”)_

 

She screams until she wastes away, the only sort of noise left for anyone to hear the agonized whisper of a screech on the wind.

 

“How silent it is,” They would say, because there has never been anyone before or since like Haruno Sakura.

 


End file.
